Mommy Dearest
by Trogdor19
Summary: After the biggest Emily/Lorelai blowout on record, Emily Gilmore realizes the most direct path to her daughter's heart is through her diner owner. So she sets out to befriend Luke Danes and ends up accidentally getting to know her daughter along the way. Emily will be tortured, Luke will be vindicated, Lorelai will be cute. That is my mission statement. Post-5x17
1. Chapter 1

_Author's Note: Dedicated to Goldnox, may she forgive me for tormenting Emily once she sees the cute Luke/Rory moments later on.  
_

 _I've been waiting five and a half seasons for Lorelai to finally tell Emily off, and as much as I enjoyed the "Shut up!" scene in the diner in 5x17, "Pulp Friction" it wasn't quite as comprehensive and satisfying as I'd prefer. And don't even get me started on the Kropogs episode. I think Emily got off too easy for all the times she was cruel to Luke. So this fic is all about fixing that. Emily will be tortured, Luke will be vindicated, Lorelai will be cute. That is my mission statement._

* * *

 **LUKE POV**

* * *

 **Chapter 1**

I have good reflexes, and bad manners.

If somebody starts screeching at me at a pitch reserved for dog's ears, I'm going to be winging a skillet their way or they're going to be hitting the pavement out front, and it won't take a full sixty seconds. But the person currently shrieking at me from across my counter is unfortunately immune to both of those outcomes, thanks to first to being a woman and second to sharing a last name with the love of my life.

"Emily—"

She cuts me off, shrilling something nearly incoherent. I could throw her out, easy. But I don't want her out of my diner, I want her out of my life. There's only one way to accomplish that.

I yank my new phone out of my pocket and lay hard on the number #1, pressing until I'm sure it's dialing and tossing it out on the counter, gritting my teeth against her fresh volley of insults.

I've watched Lorelai limp home from hundreds of Friday dinners, her shoulders wilted and her jokes half-hearted like she'd been whipped but was too proud to crawl. At this point, she's too used to taking their abuse to expect anything to change. The only way to get her to make a stand is for her mother to go after someone she loves.

Emily hits a new decibel level and I back up and lean against my shelves, hooking my thumbs into my pockets. If Emily's determined to make me her whipping boy, it's going to mean something this time.

I've got five more minutes of this if Lorelai is somewhere in town, ten if she's at the Inn. My ears might never be the same, but the insults cut a lot deeper back when I thought Lorelai secretly gave a crap if they approved of me.

"Just because you run a diner and have mastered the art of the blank stare does not mean it's going to work with me! Richard went through a great deal of trouble to set the whole thing up and you never even called Herb Smith because apparently you can't follow through on anything, not even a razor!"

When Lorelai wakes up in the middle of the night, it's my jaw her fingers travel to for reassurance, and not until she feels the rasp of stubble does she fall back asleep, usually with one of her fingernails poking me in the lip. Why on earth would I want a straight-razor shave that lasted for _days_?

Shiny brown hair flashes from outside my window and I almost smile in spite of myself as she explodes in through the front door. For a staunch non-exerciser, Lorelai can really movein heels.

"Mom, what are you doing here?"

"I'm having what I'm sure will be another fruitless conversation with this man."

Fruitless? Well, when she came to tell me to go after Lorelai last time, she probably expected something more grateful than me tossing her out with one hand and locking the door with the other. Then again, at that point, a coupon flier to Great Clips probably would have been enough to tip me over the edge to running to Lorelai's with open arms. I built carts for children's plays, for Christ's sake. If that's not desperation, I don't know what is.

Lorelai turns to me, the hurt in her eyes almost enough to make me call this whole thing off and get rid of her mother before she can do any more damage. "I'm sorry," she says, the words catching in her throat. "I'm really really sorry."

They aren't words I'm used to hearing from her. Lorelai can rarely swallow enough of her pride to apologize to me, even when she really owes me one.

My hands curl in my pockets until one of the threads in my jeans pops, and I say, "It's okay," in a voice that doesn't even sound like me. And then keep standing there. Leaving her fully vulnerable to the person I know damn well has the ability to hurt her more than anyone else. I can't even leave the room and refuse to watch, because if I walk away, Emily can't attack me and without her protective instincts roaring full-force, Lorelai will fold. She'll get passive aggressive and sarcastic as hell, but when it's over, she'll be the one left bleeding where nobody but me can see.

"Mom, go home. You have no right to barge in here and cause a scene."

Emily bristles. "I have something I want to say."

"No!" Lorelai barks. "We don't want to hear what you have to say. We just want you to please butt out of our lives."

Heat rushes beneath my shirt, because it means something to me to know that she finally sees this as our problem, not her problem. Emily perks up almost as fast as I do.

"Our lives? So there's an 'our lives?' Are you two back together?"

She doesn't even hesitate. "Yes, we are."

"So you did go to her. Just like I told you to." Emily looks pleased with me, as if I'm a particularly well-trained puppy.

It's funny. If it were Taylor, I'd be fantasizing about dipping his face in the fryer. But it's hard to even work up any anger at Emily on my own behalf because I could care less what she thinks of me. Still, I speak up because I want Lorelai to hear it. "We got back together because _we_ wanted to get back together."

"Then I simply don't understand," Emily says, distressed. "If you're back together, then what's the problem?"

Lorelai's incredulous. "What are you talking about?"

"Why won't you come to Friday dinner? Whatever happened between you two, I obviously fixed it—"

"You fixed it? You _broke_ it." An ugly flush is starting to rise to Lorelai's cheekbones.

All I can hear is the shattered voice she left on my answering machine, asking me to come over. I remember how hollow she looked when I finally found her. That was because of _this_ woman, because I let her scare me away using Rory's idiot father as her scarecrow. I grip the counter behind me and remind myself this is Lorelai's war to win, not mine. She's the strongest woman I've ever known. I'm just giving her something to fight for.

"Just because Luke and I found a way to repair the damage doesn't erase the fact that it happened."

"What I did, I did out of concern."

"Oh please. You've never had a second of concern for me."

Emily's eyes explode wide with outrage, but Lorelai's next words stop her cold.

"You don't like me, Mom."

The diner goes bomb crater quiet, and I want to break something, because Emily doesn't even argue, just huffs.

"And I know that. I've always known that, in one way or another." Lorelai's shoulders sag. "I gave up on our relationship years ago, but I still cared about you. Mostly in spite of myself." She reaches out, her fingers closing in an empty kind of gesture. "When Jason made you feel bad, I went after him, because deep down, Mom, I still wanted you to be happy. But when it comes to me, you don't even have that last scrap of compassion. Not only do you not care _if_ I'm happy, when you saw that I finally was, you did your best to destroy it."

Emily's face is frozen in a rictus of indignation and disgust, her foundation flaking off the faint lines at the edges of her lips.

"And even worse, you don't care about my happiness or even my _health._ I couldn't get out of bed, I couldn't even stand up or think about eating."

I cringe, because Emily didn't do that, not really. That was all my doing, from something snapped out of sheer frustration in Doose's Market. And despite my best efforts, Lorelai is still a couple pounds shy of the weight she lost during that time.

"Well, of course I care about your health. You break up with men all the time, how was I supposed to know you'd react differently this time?"

"Because I told you!" Lorelai slaps a hand down on the counter. "I hide everything from you so you can't ruin it and you supposedly hate that, but you asked me how serious I was about Luke and I _told_ you."

My head jerks back, because this is the first I've heard of it. And I can't help but wonder exactly what she said, because Lorelai and I have never talked about a future further than next Saturday. I told her I was in, she told me she loved me, and for me, that's enough. But now I'm clawing to know what Emily heard and I didn't.

"I was honest with you for once in my life," Lorelai says, "because I was happy and naïve enough to think that might matter to you. You knew exactly what would happen when you invited Christopher to the wedding, and afterwards, you never so much as called to check on me. You sent postcards." She laughs, bitter and long. "Talking about yourself. You know who mothered me instead? Rory and Sookie." Her gesturing hand lands on the edge of my counter and she squeezes it as if for strength. "And Luke."

She looks to me and I've never tried to say a damn thing with my eyes, like they do in all the movies, but right now I hope they're telling her loud and clear that she doesn't have to do this. We can call the game for rain and I'll let her eat every gallon of ice cream in my freezer, no matter what that will do to my ordering schedule.

But she just blinks back the tears and keeps going. "I lied to him and you broke his heart, and he still busted down my door to get to me while you were busy partying all over Europe." She laughs and it twists into a sob. "And even though we weren't speaking to each other, he snuck in while I was at work to fix the lock, so I'd be safe."

I attempt a swallow that doesn't make it all the way down.

"I hardly broke his heart, Lorelai. Don't be so dramatic. Rory's father is a part of your life and if Luke can't live with that, he may as well—"

"Stop." Lorelai's voice is so strong it doesn't even need to be loud. "That's what I should have said to you, all those years ago when you called me a trollop. Somehow, despite you being entirely clear in your disrespect for me, I let you sucker me back in. I even let you manipulate me into introducing you to Luke. And then you made me watch while you hurt him over and over and over—" The tears fall now, leaving black mascara streaks over her high cheekbones.

"Lorelai." My voice is so hoarse I hardly hear it and the counter's digging into my waist before I realize I've taken a step forward. Emily's head twitches toward me, but Lorelai is staring down our enemy and she still hasn't blinked.

"We're done, you and me. I said it, but you didn't listen. So I'll say it again." She takes a step forward and her mother flinches away, her high heel twisting and slipping on the floor.

Emily barely catches her balance, her fingers fumbling to smooth and tug at the edges of her suit jacket.

"Get. Out." Lorelai's voice is low, and meaner than I've ever heard it.

"Of this diner? Because you can hardly throw me out of your life, Lorelai. I'm your mother and I—"

"Both," she says, tears wet on her face. "They're the same. And if you knew me at all, Mom, you'd know that."

"Well," Emily huffs. "If that's the kind of behavior—"

"Go to hell, Emily." Even leaking black-lined tears, Lorelai's eyes are fire and truth and solid as the entire earth.

"Oh!" Her mother whirls and stomps out with a snap of expensive heels. She's too well bred to even slam my door, so the bell announces her departure with a half-hearted _Ding._

Lorelai sinks onto a stool without even checking to be sure one's behind her, her breath coming out on the exhale it always does when she comes back here after she's seen her mother. It's a little shakier this time.

I reach across the counter and grip her hand. I should say something, but I'm not a words guy. Instead, we just stare at opposite ends of the diner, because for something that long in coming, there's not much left to say. We're okay, our world is exactly the same as it was, and that woman is no longer in it.

"You all right?"

"That felt amazing." She lets out a gusty sigh. "So why do I feel so awful?"

"She's your mother." I shrug.

Lorelai sniffs and reaches for a napkin with her free hand. "I'm just pissed I let her mess up my makeup."

"No, you're not. You know crying's the only way you get me to cough up the good doughnuts I stash for Rory."

She looks up hopefully, one eye wiped clean and mascara still smeared under the other. "Don't tease me, Danes. Not today."

"And when have I ever teased you?" I give her a look, my voice coming out gruffer than I wanted it to.

"Well, when you were doing your signature move last Tuesday, and I said _Faster! Harder!"_ She narrows her eyes. "You held out."

"For a minute fifteen." I reach under the counter for the Tupperware where I put Rory's favorite doughnuts on days when she's due home from college.

A grin spreads across her face. "Didn't know you were counting."

"Of course I was counting. Backwards from a thousand, in Spanish." I pass her the doughnut, heavy on the sprinkles. "How do you think I held out for a minute fifteen?"

She snatches up the doughnut and smiles. Her eyes are still a little watery, but the lines at the edges of her smile are genuine. I thumb the last smear of mascara off the corner of her eye. "Now get outta here. That Inn's probably falling apart without you. You've got work to do."

* * *

 _Author's Note: Wasn't that satisfying? I know I really enjoyed telling Emily off. Make good use of that Follow button, people, because in the next chapter, Emily has a surprising reaction to Lorelai's outburst, and Luke loses his temper. Twice._

 _Also, there's going to be some cute Luke/Rory bonding later on, since I know everyone (and me) likes that._


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

 **LUKE POV**

The morning after the Emily blowout, the diner is packed. The scent of fresh pancakes softens the air, and forks ring against plates with a satisfying speed. Lorelai was in and out with the first rush of people.

We spent last night watching a lot of movies about women kicking villains' asses. Not a bad way to spend a night, considering the use of spandex—both on Lorelai and the actresses. She was cheerful, too. Like she wanted to be sad, but she wasn't, but then there was a little sad mixed into her happy because she wasn't more sad. She's a complicated creature, but easy to comfort with ice cream and the weight of an arm across her shoulders.

I'm elbow-deep in the 9:00 round of plates when Lane pokes her head over the half-door. Moving hesitantly, which is weird for her in the diner. "Hey, Luke?"

I look over. "Hey what? Why're you whispering?"

"You just…better come up front."

I grab a towel and dry my hands, and as soon as I leave the kitchen, I see the problem. Emily Gilmore. In my diner.

I flip the towel over my shoulder and stalk across the crowded room, conversations wilting in my wake. I stop next to her table and cross my arms, staring for one slow breath because the woman eats, breathes and shits manners. I want to watch her squirm when I don't play her little game.

She smiles up at me. "Hello, Luke."

I don't smile back. I watch hers falter, stretch tighter as she tries to hold it, then fall away, the hollows under her eyes a touch too yellow, like she put on some kind of paint to cover the bags. Nowhere in her too-made-up face do I see a hint of resemblance to her daughter.

I jerk my chin toward the door. "Out."

"Now, I know what you must think of me, but I'm not here to make a scene."

"I don't care what you're here for, because you're about to not be here."

From behind me, a male voice chimes in. "Um, Luke?"

"Not now, Kirk."

"Luke, I'm not sure if you knew, but that's Lorelai's mother."

"I'm not so sure we're calling her that anymore, Kirk."

Lane hiccups in a little gasp of air. Emily goes a bit paler, but she doesn't get up.

"I just came for breakfast. My daughter and granddaughter have been raving about the food here for years." She puts back on her soiree smile, so pointedly enthusiastic it's a little gross to look at. "I thought it was past time I listened to their advice."

"You want to try some diner food? Go sit on the curb and I'll toss some out to you. I hear that's where diner food comes from, anyway. If you're lucky, I'll throw in a little roast roadkill."

Her throat hollows around the tendons in that weird way old rich women's necks do. The diamonds in her necklace shimmer and tremble with the movement. "I'm not leaving until I've eaten. I'm simply famished."

I glower at her, pissed in spite of how little I thought I cared any more. She's just lucky Lorelai won't be back until lunch, or I'd take my luck with the lawyers and march her out of here in a half-nelson.

"Fine. I need the table. You won't leave it, it'll leave you." I pick up the table, leaving her and her chair in an empty spot. Everyone in the place stares. The first person in line for a table hesitates, but Lane's greasy band boyfriend jumps forward to take it.

I turn back around and Emily's still there. She'd already unwrapped her silverware, and her paper napkin is spread across the lap of her skirt as if it were Spanish linen. She smoothes it now, her hands jumping ever so slightly as I stride past her to get back to the kitchen.

"New place setting for that table," I say to Lane and she nods, springing into action.

I head back to the kitchen, a headache brewing in my temples. If that woman thinks a pair of genteely trembling hands are going to change my mind, she's about three years of post-Friday dinner Lorelai trauma off base.

"Luke?" Her voice falters just a little at the end, like Rory's does when she's nervous. "May I please just try some coffee? Lorelai thinks the world of it."

"You can die of thirst, or you can get the hell out. I don't care which." I bang the half door of the kitchen closed behind me.

#

Lucky for my future legal fees, Emily gives up by 11:30. Unluckily for my cardiologist bills, she comes back the next day. When I take away her table, she sits next to the wall with a damn napkin over her lap. When I take her chair, she sits at the counter.

The third day, she's still here and it's getting dangerously close to Lorelai's lunch hour. I'll be goddamned if I'll make my girlfriend perform two Emily Gilmore exorcisms in one week.

I come out and lean my elbows on my counter, my face close enough to Emily's that I can see where she's started to nibble off her lipstick. From here, she can count every fucking hair in my beard that I haven't been shaving because I'm hoping it'll annoy her.

"You want to eat?" I growl, because that's what she says every day. Every damn day until her prissy little voice is stuck in my head like a One Direction song.

She sits up straighter. "I would like that, Luke. Very much."

"If I give you food, will you leave?"

"Absolutely." She smiles, but it's not her normal scented-blood triumph smile. I don't know what the hell it is, but I'd be happy to never see it again.

"Diner food. We don't do escargot. We don't do béchamel. We don't do marzipan."

"I understand that perfectly."

"I bring you food, you're eating every damn bite."

"Lovely." She folds her hands on my counter, rings clicking against Formica. "May I have some coffee, too, please?"

I toss a glance at Lane and she nods, looking uneasy as she dashes back behind the counter and grabs the coffee pot. Her normal customer service smile goes crooked and queasy on her face as she tries to figure out how she's supposed to act to her best friend's grandmother who is the bane of her boss's existence.

I leave her sitting there and head for the kitchen, because I've got cooking to do.

I give her the lumberjack breakfast. Six pancakes, side of hashbrowns, two eggs over easy, ham, bacon, sausage. She eats it in small, delicate bites and washes it down with two cups of coffee, me glaring at her the entire time from my spot leaned against the kitchen door, because I'm not going to give her the chance to slip a single bite into her napkin.

But Lorelai must have gotten her appetite from somewhere, because Emily finishes without a single belch, compliments the food without a hint of condescension in her voice, and tips Lane eighteen-and-a-half percent.

She's back the next morning.

I don't even let her get to a table. I just toss down my rag and roar, "EVERYBODY OUT!"

Chairs squeak with alacrity, because everybody's still well-trained from a couple of weeks ago, when Lorelai and I broke up and anybody that pissed me off had a kneecap rattling exit to the pavement out front.

When I stalk out from around my counter, Emily jumps, the chain on her purse strap rattling against her watch. Good. I like her a little afraid of me. I like it a hell of a lot better than her humiliating compliments. And yeah, I don't exactly make a habit of intimidating old ladies, but I figure anything with fangs doesn't qualify.

"We're not doing this, you and me," I snarl at her. "I get it. You want to weasel your way back into your daughter's life so you can keep making her miserable. Too bad. You ain't getting through me."

Her chin goes up, and her mouth pinches. My eyes flare, hungry for the fight she refuses to give me. But instead she takes a breath, her face strange like it doesn't know its own expression.

"Please," she says.

#

I blow out of the diner an hour later, my legs stretching long and hot with all the shouting that's not coming out of my mouth. Emily's probably still there. I left after she polished off a Monte Cristo sandwich and ordered a side of bacon and I couldn't take looking at her anymore.

The dirt lane scrapes under my boots, and I'm probably sending up a cloud of dust behind me, as fast as I'm going. I jog up the porch and the door flies open on well-oiled hinges.

Lorelai's at the front counter and her head comes up from her ledger a second before her eyes follow. "Welcome to the Dragonfly…" She registers my face and keeps right on going, "Dragonfly Pot and Pizza, we make it while you bake it. What can I get for you this fine afternoon? We have a special on hookahs with pepperoni—"

I sidestep the counter and haul her into my arms, my lips coming down on hers so hard she should probably protest.

She doesn't.

I kiss her like a crazy man, my hands clenched in the back of her shirt, breathing her smell into me like I need to revive something. My knee finds its way between hers and even when her back crashes into the counter, she doesn't pull away.

When we finish, gasping, I try to smooth the wrinkles of her shirt against her back. "You ever feel like you've got no idea what the hell you're doing?"

She tips her forehead against mine. "All the time."

"Right. Okay." My thumbs steal one more touch of her soft, narrow waist, then I step back. "See you tonight?"

"Uh huh." She grins. "Come again soon. We've got a two for one special on today's order. The mountain man special, I think they call it."

I walk back to the diner, feeling a little better.

#

The next day at lunch, Lorelai strides into the diner with a little smile on her face and a bounce in her step. Halfway to the counter, her step glitches. But she rebounds without even changing expression, slings her purse on the counter and says, "Did you at least throw in a little rat poison in with the relish?"

"You better believe it." I don't look up from the bread order I'm putting together.

Behind her, Emily stops eating. I really hope she lifts the bun to check for rat poison.

"Side of arsenic chips."

"With anthrax sprinkles." I finish updating the quantities, find a to go cup and grab the coffee pot to fill it. "How's Ironed Sheets Lady?"

"Ironed Sheets Lady is now also starched napkin lady, and you wouldn't believe the stunts I had to pull to keep Sookie out of the dining room so she wouldn't see that the original starch level of the napkins was deemed inadequate."

"Did you have to do the 'Is that your water breaking' trick?"

"Twice! And, as if that wasn't enough, the woman called for laundry service. Gave us her _brassieres_." She draws out the word extra loud in between sips of coffee. I watch over her shoulder. "Anything?" she whispers.

"Not even a twitch."

"Damn."

I frown. "Do you have to starch the bras, too? Don't they melt when you iron them?"

She tips her head, smile set to stun-level of charm. "Please tell me you've tried."

"Sure. Used to iron Jess's all the time until the little punk switched to girdles."

She chokes on her coffee.

"Trick is, you got to keep it on low heat."

"She'll want us to iron her sex toys next." She half shouts sex toys and Emily looks a little green, so I throw Lorelai a nod so she can enjoy the victory.

The couple at the table by the window look over but whatever. They're adults.

Lorelai leans in. "Got any red wine?"

"Grape juice do?"

"As long as it's in a big, big cup."

I grab a water pitcher and stick it in the juice machine. Wholesale, it's about two fifty worth of juice. Completely worth it.

When it's done filling, I slide it in front of her and fold my arms, leaning on the counter. Her eyes narrow and she drops her voice. "Are you really going to let me throw it in her face?"

"Uh-huh."

"It's going to make a huge mess."

"Floors mop." I shrug.

Behind her, Emily has forgotten to chew. She can't have heard us, but she's just watching her daughter with wide eyes and a frozen, utterly unreadable expression.

Lorelai scrunches up her nose and whispers, "What if we went upstairs and banged around some furniture, gave her a little _When Harry Met Sally_?"

"Lane!" I call. "Cover the front for me, would you?"

"Uh, sure thing, Luke." She glances up from her coffee rounds, because we don't usually talk about it. If I leave, she covers the diner. She's got eyes, I don't have to tell her how to do her job. But I wasn't saying it for her.

Lorelai looks suspicious, but she keeps her voice low. "What if I just go over and flip the whole table into her lap?"

"Table's sturdy. I'd charge you for the plate."

"You're really going to let me do anything I want, aren't you?"

"Yup."

She tugs on a lock of her hair and looks mischievous. "Does that free pass expire tonight?"

"Nope."

A smile curls up the edges of her mouth. She leans across the counter to kiss me, a little softer than usual.

Emily stands up. "Lorelai?"

She doesn't even react to the sound of her name, or how uncharacteristically tentative her mother's voice is. I try to keep the look of pride off my face.

"We still on for monster trucks tonight?" she says.

"You bet." I nod to let her know Emily looked a little scandalized at the monster trucks. Lorelai's grin broadens, but I don't miss the little gulp of a breath she takes to brace herself before she turns to go.

"Don't forget your coffee."

"Never do." She comes back and swipes up the cup. "Call me when the credits roll?" she asks cryptically.

"Before the soundtrack even shuts off."

She strides out with a cute little jaunt to her step, and I don't even pretend I'm not watching her go.

Emily retrieves her napkin off the floor where it fell when she stood. She gets a fresh one and smoothes it across her lap, maybe one or two passes more than necessary.

"Hey." The room's full, but it's not big, and she looks up immediately when I speak to her.

She must be having some kind of argument with herself, because her face twitches a couple of times before she manages the most plastic smile I've seen that wasn't stuck on a Mr. Potato Head and says, "Yes, Luke?"

"You don't talk to her." I lean on my counter and try to keep my growl from sounding too homicidal. "If she wants to talk to you, she'll talk. First word you say to her, you're outta here."

Her Mr. Potato Head smile is a thing of history. "I understand," she says tightly. "I apologize."

I don't bother to respond, just pick up my pencil and go back to work.

#

True to my word, I slip into the store room and dial Lorelai's cell as soon as Emily's finished paying for her patty melt and double fries. My eye twitches as I listen to it ring, because I'm not entirely sure how this is going to go. Probably not well.

"Hey, you," she answers. "Did the anthrax kick in yet? Need me to help you bury the body? Make sure and sprinkle it with holy water first."

"I didn't tell you she was coming to the diner because I was handling it."

"Oh, yes, Mrs. Somerstein, I would love to bring you some more towels. I'll be right up."

Michel knows better than to be fooled that a guest would be calling on her cell phone, but I don't say anything. If she's decided we need privacy for this call, I've got bigger fish to fry.

I scowl down at a crate of onions and listen to her heels clack on the stairs, then one of the guest room doors open and close behind her. She exhales. "You shouldn't have to handle it, Luke. After what she did to us, I don't want you to have to handle her ever again."

"I don't want you to worry about it."

"I shouldn't worry as in, you're kicking her out? Or I shouldn't worry as in, you're going to let her stay for some mysterious reason so she can keep abusing you every day while you come home at night and play Twister with me and try to sneak vegetables into my ice cream like nothing's wrong."

"I didn't say nothing was wrong. My back's never going to be the same after that game of Twister."

"Yeah, well, it took me a few days to recover from what the Twister inspired you to do, so we're even." She gasps. "How did you do that?"

"Yoga, twice a day. Three times on Sunday."

"Not the Twister, you liar. How did you distract me from the whole Emily torture issue? I want details."

"I'm not kicking her out because I'm letting her learn her lesson."

Lorelai snorted. "What, so through the terrible penance of eating your delicious food, she'll be somehow redeemed? I've been eating your delicious food every day since I moved to Stars Hollow and I still haven't seen the error of _my_ ways."

A smile is tickling its way onto my face. I don't know how we can talk about something so depressing and somehow she can still make it funny, and a little charming.

"I can't believe she manipulated you into thinking she was actually sorry." Bedsprings squeak on her end of the phone and suddenly I really wish we were having this conversation in person.

"Oh, she's not sorry."

"No? No, why would she be? She only emotionally bankrupted her own daughter and dragged you through the mud for the crime of loving me. Ooh, calling it a crime makes it sound a little dirty. Wanna play handcuffs tonight?"

I ignore that, because sometimes when Lorelai gets really racy, it's because she can't face talking about something important. "Emily _thinks_ she's sorry. She really just doesn't want to be the kind of person with an estranged daughter, and she thinks eating my food will make me like her."

Lorelai laughs. "Clearly, she's never seen you interact with your customers."

"Clearly." I smile a little, straightening a crate of bread. "Anyway, if I kick her out, she might start bugging you or Rory. But if I let her do what she wants, one day she'll realize it's pointless and she's tired of vinyl chairs and paper napkins. And she'll go away on her own, for good."

"You do realize this is the same woman who got Kitty VanPetre's thirty-fifth anniversary party bumped from the Rose Room because in kindergarten, she broke Mom's purple crayon?"

"Did you see what she was eating today?"

"Was it a tuna melt? It looked like tuna melt but it rained water today, not frogs, so obviously it was a tuna melt imposter."

"She ate the real thing. And thanked me for it."

"Oh, how the mighty have fallen." Lorelai chortled. "You know, I'm starting to see the appeal."

"Hey, I should get back to work. You okay, though?" I thought she'd take it harder than this. She usually does, when I try to protect her from anything.

"I'm walking on sunshine, babe. I can live on that visual alone. Tell me you make her ask twice for the ketchup, and then you serve at least three customers while she waits. Ooh, ooh and you leave that tiny bit of crusty stuff at the top of the ketchup."

I glare at a tub of mustard. "When have I ever left _crust_ on my ketchup bottles?"

"Can you start?"

I sigh. "If it'd make you feel better."

"Luke?"

"I'm not spitting in anything, so don't even ask."

"If she's mean to you, even once, even nice-mean…"

"Don't worry, I'll just get rid of her. Worst comes to worst, I know how to use speed dial now, and you're sexy when you're mad."

"You won't believe how sexy I can get for a crusty ketchup bottle."

"This just got weird. I'm hanging up."

"Emily Gilmore eating a tuna melt," Lorelai muses, shaking her head.

"With a side of cyanide."

"And that's why I love you."

* * *

 _Author's Note: Hit that follow button, because in the chapter up next, we've got a Kirk incident, Emily pays Luke a compliment, and he puts her in her PLACE._

 _Thanks so much to all of you who have been leaving reviews! Even a single word makes me so happy to see. To guest reviewer Nancy- I can't respond to your reviews bc of your account status but I adore them! They're so detailed and fun! Thanks so much for sharing them._


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

When the entrance bell gives its usual over-enthusiastic burst at Lorelai's entrance, Emily's giving the evil eye to Miss Patty's sequined shirt, and my meat supplier's trying to screw me. I brace a hand on the counter and speak into the phone. "No, I'm definitely not going to wait an extra day for my delivery."

The bell coughs out a little afterthought as Lorelai hauls Kirk inside by one ragged rabbit ear. "My rash!" he squeaks, and collapses on the floor.

Lorelai plants her hands on her hips. "Up."

"It hurts!" he whimpers, curling into a ball of grit-covered…fur?

I don't even bother listening to my supplier's whining on the other end of the phone. "Can you wait a day to have your truck? Yes, I know you're a delivery service. Well, I'm a delivery service, too. For food. Food you're going to have here by tomorrow morning at the regular damn time or you're going to find a way to pay your bills with Monopoly money because you're not getting any more of mine!" I slam the phone into the cradle and dash back to the kitchen, because Cesar's at his sister's third wedding. I put a grilled cheese on before I came out here, and if I'd ranted for two more minutes it'd be a goner.

"Up or you're getting no Crisco, Kirk!" Lorelai shouts.

There's the squeak of a chair, then Emily's voice. "Lorelai, do you need some help with…this?"

"Oh believe me, you don't want to help with this any more than I want your help with this."

I plate the grilled cheese and stick my head out of the kitchen, blasting Emily with a single look. She sits back down, scoots in her chair, and hurriedly folds a new napkin onto her lap. I go back for the pickle and chips, then carry the order out, stepping over Kirk.

"Little help here, Luke?"

"It followed you home, it's your problem."

I deliver the plate to the corner table, then turn back to see her trying to wrestle the hood of Kirk's rabbit costume off while he howls and curls tighter onto the floor. Lorelai's purse has fallen to her elbow and it's swinging like a pendulum, banging Kirk in the cheek with every beat. She looks like she's about to twist an ankle half-crouching in those heels. I take a second look, because she also looks like about a trillion bucks in those heels.

"I need your Crisco and your store room," she huffs, finally getting his hood off. His skin is horrifying, all welts and a dark purplish red. I'm starting to understand the need for the Crisco.

"No way. Kirk, I told you to stay away from the rental costumes. You don't know where those things have been."

"I was passing out fliers for the pet store," he whimpers. "I can't wear my hot dog costume for that."

"It's store room and Crisco or we do this right here and I leave him for you to babysit while I run to Doose's for half a cart's worth of Calamine lotion." She reaches for the zipper on the bunny suit, turning her face away and cringing.

"Fine." I grab her purse in one fist, Kirk's fur-covered ankle in the other, and stomp toward the back. He whimpers a little, but his costume slides easily on the tile. In my peripheral vision, Lorelai's fingers flicker as she gives a gleeful little wave to her gaping mother. "But you get behind the curtain, not all the way in the store room. There's food in there. And no screaming." I give Kirk's leg a shake to underscore my point.

"How about a little quiet weeping?" Lorelai proposes. "You don't have a blindfold, do you? Or some bourbon?"

"You're on your own." I slam down an unopened gallon of Crisco next to Kirk's prone rabbit form, then drop a set of plastic gloves on top. "And don't come crying to me tonight when you have nightmares."

"Mmm." Lorelai purses her lips and does that little upward peek like she does when she knows I'm bluffing. "Can we at least bring the chocolate peanut butter ice cream to the upstairs freezer so I can get back to sleep afterwards?"

"I'll think about it." I look at her directly for the first time since she came in. She's a little flushed from wrestling with Kirk, but she looks happy. Well needed, a little annoyed, and busy. She's in her element.

I bend a little as she presses up on her toes and kisses me. "Thanks for the Crisco."

"You owe me," I say half-heartedly.

"A Gilmore always pays her debts."

I head back behind the counter, leaving her purse by the register so it'll be safe until she's done doing whatever I'm not thinking about behind that curtain.

I throw the next entrée on the grill, do half the books for the night, and clean out the coffee maker before Lorelai comes back out with a greasy and subdued Kirk stuffed back into his rented bunny suit. She kisses me and pinches my rear in a futile attempt to get me to jump and out her lewd behavior to her mother, then takes off to meet Rory so they can buy more sweaters, as if there's an iteration of a sweater in the world not already owned by the two of them.

Emily crosses her silverware on her plate, folds her napkin in quarters, and places it atop the plate before pushing back her chair. I haven't brought her bill yet, so this development spells trouble. With a little bit of luck, dragging a grown man in a bunny suit across the floor of a restaurant six months before Easter will be the final straw and she'll storm out. Hell, I'd even comp her meatloaf for the pleasure of getting rid of her daily presence in the diner.

She made it through every item on the menu by last week, coming up with something complimentary to say about all of it, though I think she had a little trouble with the biscuits and gravy. I started bringing her food myself four days into this debacle. Partially because I wanted to be sure she wasn't picking on Lane when I wasn't looking. Partially because I want to force her to endure my objectionable personality as much as possible, since that's apparently what she's here for. And partially because Emily Gilmore has never been served by someone who wasn't a servant, and I think she could use the experience.

This is _my_ building, from floor struts to shingles, as is the building next door. The plates are mine, recipes are mine, and every scrap of food she ate was prepared by me personally. If she wants to condescend to it or insult it, I want to know it was perfect when it hit her fork and it's her psychosis finding fault and not a slip of my kitchen staff. I like to look her in the eye when I bring her food, because here, _I'm_ in charge of whether she gets to eat, not her. And I know she can tell the difference.

I can't forget the look she gave me when I shook hands with her maid.

The only reason I've allowed her in here enough times to eat everything on the menu is because she hasn't looked at me like that again. Not since Lorelai laid into her with my perpetually broken toaster lying exhaustedly between them.

Now, Emily approaches the counter and lays her bill next to the register with a matte black credit card so elegant it looks like it belongs in a glass museum case.

I don't pick it up. I keep my hands braced on the counter and my eyes narrowed on hers, because I'm really hoping we're done with this ridiculous little game we've been playing.

She places her purse on the counter and folds her hands on top of it. "You run a very neat little business here, Luke."

"Mr. Danes, to you."

The skin at the edges of her eyes tightens and her eyes go a notch even more distant, if that's possible. "Very well. Mr. Danes. The place is clean. Your customers are numerous and happy. Your employees are loyal and exceptionally obedient. You work long hours without any evident fatigue. You never run out of an item on the menu with the exception of pie, which you seem to enjoy running out of, as you do it nearly every day. The deliveries appear to be conducted in off hours, with no interruption of business. Every item on the menu is plain, but impeccably prepared. I've not been able to determine exactly what your cost of business is, but I would venture to guess you're collecting a very reliable profit."

"Quit suckin' up." I swipe her card off the counter and run it. "You think all that crap is going to change anything between you and me, you're dead wrong. And if you think it'll change anything between you and Lorelai, you're delusional."

Her throat does its sucking-tight thing, her chin quivering a little in what I can only guess is suppressed rage. I slap her credit card slip and a greasy Bic down next to it. I said I'd outlast her until she got tired of her little game and gave up once and for all, but if she blows up at me, I'd be damn glad to have this done and behind me. I stare, stone-faced, and wait.

She doesn't touch the pen. "My compliments are not insincere. I'm not _only_ here for my daughter. I wanted to see for myself why she respects you so deeply, when every other man in her life has become disposable. I wanted to see if you could provide for her."

"Lorelai can provide for herself just fine. She could provide for three of herself if she dropped her shoe and sweater habit. Four if she learned to cook at home." I say it because it's important to Lorelai, not because it's important to me. I'd want to check out the work ethic of any guy Rory was serious about, too.

"You are not particularly polite," Emily says.

I can't help it. I crack a smile, crossing my arms across my chest. "Nope."

"And many of your customers are abhorrently behaved."

"Yup."

She glances toward the curtain, the tile behind which I'm going to be bleach mopping in a minute in case Kirk left some kind of Crisco smear behind after his emergency rash treatment.

"But then again, maybe that's just the way things are in these small towns. Perhaps that's why Lorelai feels so at home here."

"Watch it, Emily."

"I don't mean it negatively. She's never liked things to be…pleasant. She likes drama. Oddities. Taking in stray people who don't fit just right in the rest of the world. I suppose that's how she's always felt alongside our friends, so she has some weakness for it." Emily sighs. "She has a good heart, my daughter, if slightly questionable judgment. Unfortunately, that well of compassion has never extended to me."

I start to argue once, twice, but both times I stall out before speaking because her assessment of Lorelai is spot on. Clear sighted and not as disgusted as I think Lorelai would have expected it to be. I almost wish I could have recorded it. For future reference, I make a mental note of what her tone sounds like when she's giving a genuine compliment.

"We're alike in so many ways, my daughter and me."

My disbelief bursts out of me in something like a chuckle mangled by a wheezing choke.

Emily looks up sharply, her lips curled in distaste. "What? It's true. I heard her talking about how she's sewing little leaf costumes and cornucopia hats for the fall festival next week. I'm organizing a fall festival too—the DAR is sponsoring a harvest time charity dinner to benefit the local food bank. We both spend our time on charity and socializing in our communities, but somehow for her, the work is morally superior because it's with working class people, not wealthy people." She gives me a shrewd look. "If I were you, I would never tell Lorelai how much you make, or she'll distrust you as well." She nods outside. "The truck is a good cover, and wherever you live, I'm sure it's suitably modest, but mark my words, if she finds out, things will be different."

She picks up her credit card and files it crisply back into her wallet.

I clamp my mouth shut, because I'm pretty sure Lorelai has an inkling of my net worth, since I bought a hundred thousand dollar building after she told me I needed room for a double bed, and also since she asked me for thirty thousand dollars, which I had in a personal check by morning. But if I tell her mom she borrowed thirty grand from me, I won't get a kiss until Christmas and only then if I make her a Santa Clause burger again.

Emily looks away with a little irritated exhale. "She thinks I'm so slovenly, lazing about the house with nothing to do all day. She thinks because she has a job that she's modern and industrious and I'm some sort of parasite living off my husband. But what does she do at the inn all day? Manage maids and cooks and events. She runs a household, just like I do, and because she does it in Stars Hollow rather than Hartford, she can continue to hate me and pretend our lives are utterly alien to one another."

"You want to pull this poor me act, you should try Babette." I point down the street. "Maybe she'll feel sorry enough for you to forget that you sent a sixteen-year-old girl and a newborn to live in a damn shed, because you couldn't get past one mistake."

"I never sent her. She left. And I've apologized a thousand times for my shock at her pregnancy, and the way it came between us, not that she'll ever forgive me." She hooks her purse over her shoulder. "Remember that, too. Once you've wronged Lorelai, she might let you back into your life, but she'll remind you with a million little backhanded comments how you hurt her." She straightens up. "But. That is in the past. We're here now and that's that."

I narrow my eyes, not sure what she's leading up to. She's been on her best behavior for two full weeks now, suspiciously polite, never a trace of condescension or mocking in her tone. But now when she looks at me, I recognize her normal expression in its haughty confidence. With a little less artifice, and a shrewd light in her eyes.

"My point was, a strong business is something to be proud of. Few people have the discipline required to run a business well."

At that faint compliment, I snap. "I don't need you to tell me I run my business well. Especially since you've never run anything more than a charity fundraiser." I slap my hands down on the counter. "Math tells me everything I need to know about my business. Margins in a diner are razor thin. Making one pay is all about being ruthless with the numbers. My spoilage rate is less than 1%. Industry average is five times that."

Her lips pinched up tight after I called her on her housewife armchair quarterbacking, but now I'm pissed. Who the hell is she to compliment me? I'll tell her exactly how I run a goddamn business just so I can watch her face go blank in incomprehension.

"Part of that's your daughter, because she'll eat just about anything if it's fried. The rest of it is an algorithm that runs my ordering schedule based on the habits of the regulars. I cook or Cesar cooks. We don't make more batter than we sell, we don't burn an egg, and we don't throw out a peach pie because I don't make peach until Margaret Ginsmore is having her time of the month and she'll buy three slices every time she comes in."

Emily goes white, and her pinched lips drop apart in favor of a gape.

"I don't pay staff to be here unless I know the rush will be more than I can turn over on my own. I make my own cleaning products out of generic base ingredients, and I have a separate menu for out of towners with higher prices. Their service is slower because they're not factored into my algorithm, but that means they go away happy because all their stuff is made fresh to order."

Now her eyes flare with admiration, probably because I'm openly screwing people who aren't going to be return customers.

"Sure, I could buy some nicer chairs and serve duck like Sookie does out at the Inn." I scoff. "I can make duck. But nobody around here buys duck, Emily. They run a Zagat-rated restaurant over there and their profit margin's 8% lower than mine. 14% on lunch. But do you think I tell your daughter that?"

She sniffs. "As if she'd listen."

"Exactly. But she's smart. She knows jack about the kitchen but she shut down lunch sixteen days after I would have done it." I straighten up, pride taking some of the edge off my temper. "Not bad for an amateur."

"So you're more than a cook." She nods. "All right. You've proven that. But then why did you turn down the growth opportunity Richard presented you with? My husband has a very good head for business. With his help, you could go from a diner owner to a corporate magnate."

"I didn't take Richard's advice to expand because I can't know fifteen towns worth of regulars, which means spoilage goes up, marketing costs go up, and profits go down." I narrow my eyes. "And yes, Emily, I may only be a diner owner but you know what? I pulled down more than your husband did last year. So why don't you go home, sit on your designer couch, and think about _that_?"

She bristles. "That is a lie," she says coldly. "And how could you even know how much my husband makes? Did you paw through our trash for our tax returns?"

"I didn't have to. When he took me golfing, he was all too happy to brag it up while he was explaining to me that golf clubs are like engagement rings: the rule of thumb is they cost about two months' salary. He may have come into life with a hell of a lot bigger nest egg than I did, but we own the exact same set of golf clubs." I smile fiercely, tightly.

"Well!"

If I could take a picture of Emily's face in this moment and frame it for Lorelai, I'm pretty sure she'd never ask for another Christmas present as long as we both lived.

"So I suppose now you think you're good enough for our daughter simply because you can wring a decent salary out of this place."

"No. I think your daughter has never once asked me how much I made, and she's had nineteen years of living in this town to figure out what kind of man I am." I lean forward and stare her down. "If she ever decides I don't make her happy, she can leave with my blessing, because _then_ I wouldn't be good enough for her."

Emily's whole body trembles, but for the life of me I can't tell if she's still angry or something else entirely. I don't know if I've finally won her respect or made her hate me even more. After a long, long moment she nods, and then she leaves.

For the first time, I'm actually curious to see if she'll show up tomorrow.


	4. Chapter 4

_Author's Note: I was going to wait one more day to update, but the free use of caps lock in the reviews convinced me otherwise._

 _I belatedly added a bit more to the last chapter of Emily drawing parallels between her and her daughter, so if you read on the first day I updated, maybe go back and take a peek at that last argument between Emily and Luke so you can enjoy the changes. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! This year I'm thankful for the Gilmore Girls and fanfic because this has been a Rough month on so many different levels and writing fic again (and reviews!) are really helping me not be sad._

* * *

 **Chapter 4**

I don't see Emily again until Monday.

I'd like to say that makes it a nice weekend, but it almost sets me a little off balance to not have her eating quietly in the corner, her back so straight the people for two tables around start minding their manners. On the far side of the room, people still shoot the breeze about football and the sewer leak out on Third St, but on Emily's side it's all theatre and literature and the latest cultural event, like that boring crap is just seeping out of her pores and infecting the townspeople.

I want to tell Lorelai about The Emily Phenomenon, but I don't want to get her started on that bit again about catching her mom in a big Have a Heart trap and taking her a safe distance before releasing her. Like Hollywood. Or the North Pole.

Emily comes in the door and instead of taking a table, she strolls right up to the counter and considers me. I keep tallying the morning's receipts and ignore her. If she wants food, she can sit the hell down. If she wants to talk to me, she can rewind about thirty years and start treating her daughter like a human being.

"I came yesterday but you weren't here," she says after a minute.

"Yeah, well, I like to go into the city and shoot some heroin on the weekends. Break some windows, do a little light vandalism." I'm starting to understand how Lorelai became so sarcastic.

"I know very well where you were. Lane told me you were at Yale, building a new bed for Rory's dorm room."

"Kid's got too many books. Room came with shelves, she filled those. I put in more, she filled those. No more walls, so we jacked up the bed, made it into a platform of shelves." I frown at Emily. "Have you been making her read books on wine?"

"Of course not, she's only twenty! It's illegal and everyone knows you can't cultivate a proper palette until you're twenty-six anyway."

"Hmph. She's got a lot of wine books. And not a single bottle of the real stuff." I shrug. "But that's Rory for you." I almost ask why she cares that I wasn't here, but decide I don't want to know.

Emily smiles slightly. "It is just like her." She clears her throat. "If she'd have told us she needed a bed, of course we would have been happy to purchase one. But she didn't, and I wanted to thank you for assisting her. Of course, if we can reimburse you for your time and materials, I'd be pleased to do that as well."

I throw my pen down. "You see, that's the problem with you people. You say things in just the right way so it makes it sound like she belongs to you and only you and I'm some kind of hired goon. Well guess what, Emily? She asked for my help, not yours. You know why? Probably because she knew I'd build her a bed and I wouldn't make her feel like she owed me anything for it." I snatch up my pen again, but rip through the paper when I write the next figure.

"I wasn't saying that at all! I was simply trying to convey my embarrassment that she had to come to you, because as her family, we should have provided for her needs."

The pen is starting to bend in my hand, so I drop it and cross my arms, staring at Emily until it finally clicks in her thick, too-coiffed head what she just said.

 _Family._

Her shoulders sink a little, and then she draws herself back up, her careful expression not enough to mask the shadow in her eyes. "I apologize, Mr. Danes. It was rude of me to put it that way."

I don't want her apology. I wanted the look on her face when she realized she could name herself family all she wanted, but Rory calls me when she needs shelves, or a flat tire fixed, or when she can't afford the book for her anthropology seminar but she caught Lorelai clipping coupons again last week.

She turns and takes a table across the room. I go back to my receipts.

It's Lane's morning off, and it's forty full minutes before I cool off enough to bring Emily a menu. When I do, she doesn't reach for it, just sits with her hands folded in her lap and her seat not all the way tucked into the table. "I didn't mean to imply Rory wasn't a part of your life," she says, in a softer voice than I've ever heard from her. Even on her most polite day. "I just miss her. She hasn't been coming to Friday night dinners for some time now." She looks down. "Though I suppose you knew that."

Of course I knew that. Lorelai and Rory came in for ice cream the night of the big declaration. Rory's eyes were all red and watery, and even the peanut butter and marshmallow cream glaze I whipped up wasn't enough to put a smile back on her face.

"What do I look like, your therapist? This is a diner. Now order or get out."

She set the menu aside. "Coffee please. And whatever entrée you choose would be fine."

Today, though, she just picks at her food. After an hour and a half, I can't stand it anymore so I go and snatch the plate away from her. "You want to see her, you come in nights. Tuesdays and Thursdays. Don't tell her mother."

Her eyelashes flutter wide. "Rory drives down here twice a week and doesn't visit her mother?"

"She needs a quiet place to study. I guess she had a tree but some jackass took it over. She's got a dorm, but there's Paris." I shrug. "If she studies in the library, she knows everyone so they stop by and talk and she gets nothing done, so she comes here. I keep her flush in coffee and pie and she stays after I close and helps me clean up." I've been trying to teach her some simple stuff, grilled cheese and scrambled eggs, but for all her brains, the kid is crippled in the kitchen.

Emily is listening so intently I start to get a little self-conscious. Guess she was really hungry for news of her granddaughter.

"Well, doesn't she know everyone here in town as well?"

"Sure. I move that table into the storage room for her." I hook a thumb at Rory's favorite, the little white and red one. "It's really a desk anyway. Got it from the thrift store in New Haven." I say it just to watch Emily flinch but get nothing. It's possible she's just never heard of a thrift store. "Says she likes the smell of fresh vegetables, makes her feel smart. With any luck, she'll inhale a nutrient or two by accident."

I frown, realizing how long I've been talking.

"I've got work to do." I stalk off, but I can feel her watching me, and I don't like it when it doesn't feel like she's scheming at me. It makes me uneasy.

#

The bell over the door rings, but it's so subdued I don't know who it us until I look up, and I have to blink twice. My brain recognizes the curve of hip and shiny flounce of hair of a beautiful woman first, and only second labels that picture as my girlfriend. Lorelai looks tired, her shoulders sagging and she glances at a table, sees her mother in the back, and sort of shudders a little before she comes up to the counter instead.

"Hey, can I sit up here and eat with you?"

"Nope." I dump a filter and fresh coffee grounds into the pot and snap the basket into place. "You're going to criticize the way I cut pie—"

"It's skimpy!"

"—and flirt with me until Kirk starts taking notes again and Miss Patty starts looking at us with"—my lip curls—"that look." I pick up the carafe to fill it and gesture toward the room at large. "You're less trouble at a table. Sit at a table."

She lays a hand on the counter and folds the other on top of it, tipping her head with a smile that almost washes all the tired out of her eyes. "Aww, you missed me."

I try to scrape up a scowl but my mouth doesn't want to cooperate. "Why would I miss you when you ditched me two days in a row for Al's Pancake World?"

"He had a two for one special on the chow mein sandwich! Plus, curry fries." She shakes her hair down to block her face in our now familiar signal for saying something she doesn't want her mother to hear. "Hey, you could warn a girl when the Emperor has no clothes. At least light the bat signal or send a text message or something."

"What's a text message?"

She lays her head on the counter and groans softly. "I can't. I'm starving and there's no coffee and the ghost of mothers past is torturing me and I can't explain technology to you until I have at least 1500 calories worth of melted cheese. With nut sprinkles."

"You want the special, then, or you got something in mind?

She peeks up, her blue eyes crafty again. "Special special or special for me?"

"Which answer will get you off my back?"

"The second."

"Then it's the second."

She blows me a kiss. "Perfect. And pie, easy on the skimp."

"You're not going to have any room after the special."

"Oh ye of little faith." She wriggles onto a bar stool, a little of the bounce back in her movements.

I lean my arms on the counter, the back of my hand finding its way to rest against the back of hers. "Everything okay at the Inn?"

"Nothing a bullwhip and a chair wouldn't take care of." She forces a smile.

I nod. "I'll make you something to eat."

The meat's barely on the grill when she comes up behind me and wraps her arms around my waist.

"You know you're not supposed to be in here."

"I'm not. There's just a big, hungry koala on your back."

"If you get one of your hairs in your lamb chops, you better not come crying to me."

"Lamb chops!" She cranes her neck to see around my shoulders. "You're not making those just for me, are you?"

"Nah, it's the special."

"Was anyone else given the chance to order this special?"

I add a little pepper.

"That's what I thought."

I let out an aggravated sigh. "We can pretend it's just the daily special or we can pretend I'm making it special for you, but you can't have it both ways. Make up your mind."

"I have." She squeezes me a little tighter.

And I shouldn't, but I let her stay there for a while, her head heavy against my shoulder blade while I cook.

"When you're running this place," she asks, "do you ever feel like the numbers are never going to add up, but you're strapped into a roller coaster with no brakes?"

"That's how it starts out. But eventually, you'll build up enough from the good times to buffer the bad." I flip the lamb and start to sauté the carrots. "Once, when I was first starting out, I couldn't afford to pay my meat supplier, so I went out and shot a deer and sold it as beef all month."

She snickers. "How very Davy Crockett of you."

Her hand strokes over my stomach, slow and soothing. The only customer out front is Emily, and I'm not going to put myself out checking on her comfort, so I just stay put.

"Why don't you ever give me business advice?" Lorelai asks.

"Why, you want some?"

"Not yet. Maybe soon."

I frown. That doesn't sound good. "Didn't cutting lunch help?"

"Yeah, but I didn't do it soon enough. Now we're behind." She rubs her cheek against my flannel. "It's not just the Inn, honestly. It feels like Rory's starting to slip away from me. Somehow, after she turned thirteen and didn't go completely crazy, I convinced myself it would never happen. But she doesn't tell me everything anymore. She doesn't come home every weekend."

"She's not slipping away."

"I don't know. Did you see anything, when you were up at the dorms building her new bed?"

"More than I wanted to, believe me."

She shakes me. "Tell me tell me tell me!"

"Hot grill, woman. Careful." I clasp a hand over hers to still her, and so she can't accidentally bump her knuckles against the edge. "Met her boyfriend."

She lets go so she can jump to the side and gape at me. "Logan? Are you kidding? I haven't even met Logan yet. I mean, at least not when he was wearing a shirt and less of Rory's lipstick."

"Even without the lipstick, he looks like a frat boy prick."

Lorelai laughs. "You're so sexy when you swear."

I give her a sideways look. "You're a strange woman."

"You love it."

I nod easily.

Lorelai pokes me in the side, clearly not done with her interrogation. But at least now, she's smiling. "What else, Sherlock?"

"He's the reason she needed a bed. She got the idea for the shelves and asked him to help, so he sent his driver over." I scoff. "But his driver drives. Doesn't know how to build anything. Messed her bed up taking it apart, so they couldn't get it back together and she had to sleep on the floor. She's friends with the driver, I guess, so she didn't want to tell him it didn't work, and she called me instead."

"That's my girl," Lorelai says softly, and I don't know if she's talking about Rory being friends with the driver, or taking after her mother and calling me every time so much as a light bulb needed to be changed. Not that I minded all those years of light bulb changes. I always bought her the cheap kind for a reason.

"Anyway, Logan hung out for a while. He's nice to her. In a slick, cocky way, but you can kinda tell anyway."

"Tell what?" Lorelai asks softly.

"That he knows how special she is. How smart."

She smiles. "You're making me feel a lot better about this kid. Do you actually like him?"

"Like him?" I almost choke. "No. Kid's a spoiled frat boy bozo. But even a bozo is smart enough to see Rory's something else. He catches himself watching her when she's not looking, and gets all twitchy. Saw him do it three times."

"Aww, I like that." She beams. "Maybe I won't call the hitman just yet."

"Don't call off the hitman on my account. I'll go in halfsies with you."

She smiles, but it fades quickly. "It just sucks that I have to find out about my daughter's life by spying on her. I should never have let on how much I hated No Strings Attached Logan. We need to meet him under a flag of truce, but I'm not sure that would help." She pouts. "Everybody hates the meet the parents dinner."

"You know, platform book shelf beds are big, hard to move." I pop a roll in the oven to heat it up. "So I installed some fasteners where we could unhook it apart into pieces. That way it fits nice and snug in the bed of my truck, and Rory can have it for her dorm next year, or an apartment. Whatever she wants."

Lorelai slips her fingers under the hem of my shirt, tickling the bare skin of my hipbone. "Are you trying to distract me with your thoughtfulness? Because it's totally working."

I flip the carrots. "I rigged one of the fasteners to fail. When she calls me to fix it, you and I will be on a date."

She gasps. "When's it going to break? Saturday night? Because you promised me ice skating with you on actual skates this time. It better not break then."

"I'm good but I'm not that good, Mata Hari." I scowl. "It breaks when it breaks, and we'll go up there together. Then, while I'm running to the hardware store for parts, you'll get to hang out with Rory and Logan in their normal stomping grounds."

"Because he'll probably be there when the bed breaks." She grimaces. "Brilliant. Nausea-inducing, but brilliant."

I shut off the stove. "Neutral ground, tools scattered everywhere, mattress leaned up against the wall. I'll bring beer and get him to help me lift somethin', everybody will be off their guard and we won't have to do the stiff, 'pass the butter and what are your plans for the future' thing."

She winds her arms around my neck. "I love you, you brilliant, devious man. Did you know that?"

"I know you're going to make me burn your roll." I peck her on the cheek and turn back to the stove. I rescue the roll, plate her lamb, slide the carrots on next to it, and sprinkle a few breadcrumbs on top. Then I dust off my hands and bend her backwards into a thorough kiss. Her fingers curl into the hair that escapes the bottom edge of my cap, her nails raising goosebumps on the back of my neck and making me wish it were closer to closing time.

I raise her back to standing and give her one more kiss on her now-swollen lips.

She blinks at me. "If your insurance company knew about _that_ , your policy would be in the shredder by morning."

"Don't pretend you came back here for anything else." I hand her plate. "Now go eat your dinner."

"I'm not pretending anything. I got exactly what I came for." She tosses a carrot in her mouth and gives me a saucy smile, then sashays out.

#

Since it's so empty tonight, I end up leaning on the counter while she eats dinner and flirts outrageously with me. I tell her about the log on a leash Kirk brought into the diner, and the cease and desist order Taylor gave me to get me to stop serving ice cream. I'm still a little proud of the paper cut I left on his nose when I threw it back in his face, but Lorelai flames up for a second when she hears Nicole wrote the cease and desist. But I get her laughing again when I tell her about the pipe cleaner model of the Louvre that Paris put together with hot glue, complete with pipe cleaner interpretations of all the most famous paintings. Apparently, the Impressionists look better in pipe cleaner than in person.

Kirk comes in toward the end, but Lorelai and I just talk through the kitchen door while I cook his burger.

We have such a nice time that I forget Emily's still there until Lorelai kisses me goodbye and heads back to the inn for the evening shift.

But before the door even hits the jam behind her, Emily rushes toward the counter, grabbing at Lorelai's mostly empty plate. "She ate a vegetable! I saw it!" She points triumphantly at the last carrot. "I knew it! How did you get her to eat a vegetable?"

"She'll eat 'em if you steam them, then carmelize them in lemon olive oil." I wipe my hands on a towel, quirking my eyebrows. "Come on, you got her to adulthood. You're telling me you didn't know the lemon olive oil trick?"

"Well," she sputters. "I just didn't think you would have lemon infused olive oil at a diner."

"Say it a little louder," I grumble. "You know how bad the markup is on citrus infusions?"

"You have lemon olive oil?" Kirk comes over. "Can you cook my fries in it next time? I think the citrus would be delicious in the crunchy outer coating."

"No, Kirk—" I start, but Emily turns and freezes him with a look.

"Lemon olive oil causes global warming," she snaps. "I'm shocked you would risk such a consequence for the sake of French fries."

"Well, well, I mean I didn't mean to—"

She nods imperiously. "I thought not. Now go sit down and finish your supper."

"Yes, ma'am."

He turns and mopes back to his chair and I watch him go, starting to smile in spite of myself.

Emily collapses onto a counter stool. "When she was eight, her doctor told us she was deficient in vitamins and minerals. I told her she couldn't eat any other food until she finished her vegetables. She went on a hunger strike, fainted at school, and ended up in the hospital on an IV, gobbling Jell-O and chocolate pudding she got from the nurses." She presses her fingers to her temple. "I starved my own daughter into the hospital. What could I do? I gave up. She won't even swallow vitamins, for heaven's sake."

"Because she thinks they taste like chalk. Have you tried the gummy ones?"

She glares. "Of course I tried gummy vitamins. I'm not an imbecile. She wouldn't touch them."

"Did you try dumping them out of the jar, mixing them in with a bag of other gummies, then hot gluing the bag shut?"

She stares at me, something rearranging itself behind her eyes. "No. I hadn't thought of that. Does it work?"

"Sure. Long as you don't mix the shapes wrong." I rip her ticket off my order pad. "You ready to cash out?"

She leans forward. "Can you write down the recipe for those carrots? I want to show my chef how to make them."

I snort. "No."

"Please? It would be good for Lorelai's nutrition, and Rory's, too. Clearly you must care something about that."

I flip the towel back over my shoulder. "It's not going to do you any good because she's not coming back to those guilt trip dinners of yours."

She better not, anyway. I like our new Friday night dinner tradition. The girls play vicious, shouty games of Monopoly at the corner table, sneaking junk food to make it until the diner closes, and then we take turns picking the restaurant. Anyplace but Stars Hollow, those are the rules. Rory took us to fondue, and Lorelai dragged us to a bowling alley where she invented some annoyingly delicious hors d' oeuvres out of cut up candy bars and strategically placed salted popcorn. On my week, I went for sushi. First because I'd never had it before. Second, because watching the faces Lorelai and Rory pulled over raw fish made me laugh harder than I have since I was a kid.

Emily straightens. "I intend to earn my daughter's forgiveness, Mr. Danes. And if I do not, then the carrot recipe will go to waste."

I had my no all queued up, because there's nothing that delights me more than saying that word to Lorelai's mother. But something about the way she said, "earn" kind of sticks in my ears. Besides, I can have some fun with this. I cross my arms. "I'll teach you the recipe. But you have to make it yourself."

"And the chocolate chip pancakes she likes!" She's already heading around the counter.

"Hold up. Nobody gets in the kitchen with their hair uncovered." I pull my spare ballcap out from under the counter. "And no pancakes. With all the ones you screw up that have to be thrown out, it'll mess up my ordering."

"I will not 'screw up' pancakes," Emily snips. "They're just bread, how hard can it be?"

I stare her down. "Diner food is simple. That means there's no fancy sauces or spices to cover up your mistakes. It's all about figuring out a system and being reliable enough to duplicate it. Fast, with no waste because waste is money. You couldn't do it if I had a year to train you."

"Please," she scoffs, her chin coming up. "I could do it in a month."

I laugh. "You'd bankrupt me in a month, and I'd have to pay for a second dumpster for all the food you'd throw away."

"Try me," she says coolly. "I'll pay for anything I spoil."

The spark of competition catches hold of me, and I take a step forward, glowering down at her, but this time she holds her ground. After watching me bark at people all month, she's not so afraid of me anymore. Too bad. I'll have to throw somebody out tomorrow.

"Not with your husband's money, you don't. I can't stand you hoity toity rich people who never have to feel the pinch when you screw up. Real people pay for their own mistakes."

This time she does flinch. Just with her eyelashes, her manicured hands curling into fists at her sides. "If not in money," she says, her voice strained, "then how do I pay?"

"You'll work off your debt. Seven bucks an hour to cover all throwaways and spoilage. Not just cooking. Mopping, organizing the store room, cleaning out the fryer. You think you're good enough to work in my kitchen, then what I say goes."

She snatches my spare ball cap out of my hand and crams it down over her impeccably styled hair. Then she marches into my kitchen without me.


	5. Chapter 5

_Author's Note: This chapter touches on a canon event, but most of this story remains non-canon. Sorry for the update delay-I was away from internet for a few days. On the upside, I wrote my first Walking Dead fic while I was away, so if any of you are Caryl fans, check that out._

* * *

 **Chapter 5**

"Hey, Luke. How's the diner biz?" Rory grins at me as she comes in the door, the bell giving a happy, polite little trill.

"Can't complain. Better than a bullet in the leg. How's school?"

She winces. "Think it took off two toes this week, and it's only Tuesday."

"Let me move your desk into the storage room, then, and you can get to studying." I come out to pick up the table that I've marked off with her little "Reserved" sign. Except I have to stop or bump into Rory because she's not moving.

"Hi, Grandma."

I'd forgotten about Emily. She burned five burgers and she's eating her sixth. On the third, she forgot all her resolutions and snapped at me. On the upside, I've been meaning to clean out the grease trap for ages, and she did a really thorough job on it.

She dabs barbeque sauce off her lips and smiles brightly. "Hello, Rory. Have you eaten? Would you like to join me for dinner?"

"Uh, what are you doing here?"

"I like the food." The way she says it now, it almost sounds genuine. Her smile twitches a little at the corner when she glances at me, then back to Rory, her eyes lighting up. "Luke's not too fond of me, though."

Rory laughs, relaxing as she moves a step closer. "Yeah, he's like that with most people."

Emily pats the seat next to her, more animated than I've seen her in all the weeks she's been coming here. "Come! Sit! I'll buy you some pie and we can catch up a little."

"She has to study." I come up to stand beside Rory. Emily's technically not breaking my rule, because Rory did talk to her first, but she's not guilt tripping her granddaughter in my diner. "She comes here to study."

Rory glances at me, then back to Emily. She hitches her bag higher on her shoulder, planting her feet. "Did you apologize to Mom?"

"Oh, Rory." Emily lowers her voice and smoothes the napkin over her lap. "I've tried. She won't take my calls."

"Don't you ever see her here? Since you, ah, like the food so much?"

I stiffen, because I'm not sure how Rory will take news of the rule that keeps Emily as strictly an observer in her daughter's life until she's invited back in. Because it's my rule, and I'm suddenly not so sure I have the right to be making rules in this family.

"Well, I do, but—" Emily breaks off, meeting my eyes briefly. "That's between me and Luke."

"Between you. And _Luke._ "

"That's right." Emily nods.

Rory glances between the two of us. I keep my face utterly blank, because I have no idea how this is going to play out. And I'm really not sure I have the right to get in between Rory and her grandmother, no matter how used to protecting Lorelai I've gotten.

She pulls out a chair at the table. "Okay, but just pie. Then I have to study. And I'm not coming back to Friday night dinners unless Mom does."

My heart grows two sizes inside my chest and I can't stop myself from reaching over to squeeze Rory's shoulder, that's how proud I am.

She gives me a reassuring smile and mouths, " _I'll be okay_." Behind her hair where her grandma can't see, just like her mom.

I head back to cut two slices of the rum lemon meringue, and listen to Rory as I get out the plates.

"Exactly how long have you been coming here, Grandma?"

"Well…" Rings click against the Formica table. She must be doing her rich lady hand-foldy thing. "It came to my attention that I didn't know very much about your lives, you and your mother. So I thought I would try to learn, and since you've been coming here for so long, this seemed the best place to start."

I bring the pies back and put them on the table. Emily smiles at me, and I realize she pitched that last comment a little louder than she generally speaks in here. I don't smile back.

"The people around town are a little…" she says and pauses, choosing her words carefully, "odd. Colorful, I suppose you might say? Though the man through the window next door, with the little toupee? Is perfectly awful."

Rory giggles. "That's Stars Hollow for you. Good pie, though, huh?"

Emily picks up her fork. "Very good pie."

#

I swear my phone knows when Lorelai's calling, just like the bell on my door knows when it's her. They both seem to ring a little louder when she's upset.

"Whoa, whoa, slow down," I say as she begins to babble. We're just finishing up the breakfast crowd and I've got to keep one eye on Emily, because she's working off the thirty-two pancakes she ruined yesterday by bussing tables. She's got these weird kitchen gloves with little jewels at the wrist that probably cost more than my truck, and an apron with an odd, asymmetrical designer profile. But it looks like she's at least being polite to people when she crosses paths with them while carrying her dirty plates.

I listen to Lorelai explain about what's going on at the Inn, but it hardly matters what the emergency is, because I can already tell by the panic underlying her tone: she needs me.

"I'll be right there," I say, and hang up. I stick my head in the kitchen to say a few words to Cesar, then run for my truck. My coat's upstairs, so I leave without it.

"Luke!"

I hear my name as I dash across the street, but I don't slow down because I recognize the voice. But as I wrench the door to my truck open and hop inside, I catch a glimpse of Emily full-out running in heels, her knees hampered by her tiny skirt but the fear on her face unmistakable. Something winces inside my chest, and I crank down my window and wait a second for her to catch up.

"Luke, what's happening? Is Lorelai hurt? Did something happen to Rory?"

"She's fine. Crisis at the Inn."

She latches on to my door, all white faced and panting from her sprint. "What kind of crisis?"

"She's got six ducks and a dining room full of guests with no chef. No blood is involved, though if I don't get there soon, I can't guarantee it'll stay that way."

"So you're going to…cook?" She looks bewildered.

"It's kind of what I do, Emily." I don't even try to rein in the sarcasm as I crank my key in the ignition.

"But what about your diner?"

"Cesar and Lane will do breakfasts and we'll close for lunch and dinner until Lorelai and I figure out a more permanent solution."

Emily's still clinging to my door. "You'd do that for her business? At the expense of your own?"

I scowl. "Will you get outta my way? If I don't get there, Lorelai's going to try to cook something and that will lose them a lot more customers than shutting down for a few days."

"Well…can I help?"

"Yeah." I put the truck in gear. "By not following me."

I'm halfway to the Inn before it sinks in that she actually did as I asked.

#

Emily is in my kitchen and she is wearing a hairnet.

I stare, my attention divided between the hairnet and the fact that I just made very vigorous love to her daughter.

The bell yelps as Lorelai breezes out the front door, blissfully unaware of all the things that are deeply wrong back here. Sookie's maternity replacement finally starts today and I asked Cesar to open without me again so Lorelai and I could sleep in. It's been a long, crazy week and we both needed the rest.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" I bark at Emily.

She smiles. "I didn't know when you'd be back, so Cesar was teaching me some things. He's got a little trick with the omelettes you didn't show me."

Cesar's eyes widen. "No boss. Nothing fancy, I swear. I stuck to the system."

I wave that away and ask in Spanish, " _Scale of 1 to 10, how mean has she been to you_?"

" _Is 10 good or bad_?"

" _10 is good_."

"You know it's very rude to speak in other languages when—"

My eyes shift to her, and she shuts up.

" _8_ ," Cesar says. " _Sometimes she says things, and they sound like a 10? But they're really a 5_."

I advance on Emily. "You listen to me. This is my cook. He is not your servant. He is the father of two boys, the uncle of seven girls, and he is the most consistent, reliable cook I've trained in fifteen years. You will treat him with the same respect you accord to the Queen of goddamn England, or you will find yourself out on your ass!" My voice steadily climbs as she backs away, finally bumping up against one of the chest freezers. "And if that happens, you will not see your daughter or your granddaughter for a very long time, because neither of them are speaking to you. Do you understand me?"

"I hardly think anything I've done would warrant this kind of abuse," she huffs. "I wasn't—"

I grab her elbow and start hustling her out of the kitchen.

"I understand! Wait. I understand. I wasn't rude, I assure you."

"Not to me. To him." I jerk my chin toward Cesar.

She turns his way with a socialite's smile. "I didn't mean to be rude. I'm terribly sorry." I keep staring, and she pauses, then begins again in a little less polished voice. "I'm not very comfortable in a kitchen, and if I was short with you, I certainly didn't mean to be. It won't happen again."

"Okay." Cesar shrugs, his gaze bouncing between me and Emily. He's got a thing for soap operas, and he looks like he's eating this up.

"Fine," I snap, letting go of her arm. "We working on waffles today?"

"Yes, waffles." She smoothes her sleeve, even though I was careful as hell when I grabbed her. I'm not in the business of roughing up old ladies, even if I am getting pretty used to yelling at her.

"We'll take waffles. Cesar, you take the rest of the menu."

"Well, I can handle more!" Emily protests.

"No, you can't. When you can make a hundred perfect waffles, we'll talk pancakes. When you can make a hundred perfect pancakes, you should probably stop harassing me and get a damn hobby."

She smiles. "I rather enjoy this one."

I roll my eyes. "You would." Woman's a sadist at heart. But at least she's a sadist that's finally learning to shut up on cue.

* * *

 _Author's Note: In the next chapter, we get to follow Luke and Lorelai away from the diner and get a tiny bit of Rory/Logan. I'm loving the warmth of this fandom-adore you guys so much!_

 _Please remember, though, I haven't seen the Revival yet because I'm still finishing my first GG watch through. No Revival spoilers, please!_


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

The dorm room floor digs into my back and I wince. I'm too old for this shit. But everybody else is sprawled out on the floor so I'm not going to be the stodgy one in a chair. Instead, I hold the book up so I can find another question to quiz Rory with.

"The date the rock paper scissors guy surrendered the French troops in Haiti," I read out. Lorelai's head bounces on my stomach as I read and I recross my boots.

"General Rochambeau, Luke." Rory rolls her eyes tolerantly. "November 19, 1803, and it was still called Saint Domingue then, not Haiti."

Lorelai lifts her book. "Pop quiz, hotshot. Do you know the difference between a vintner and a sommeliere?"

"A vintner makes the wine, a sommeliere supervises a restaurant's wine cellar and makes recommendations. Come on, Mom, that was too easy."

"Not my fault you inherited my brains." Lorelai tosses the book at her. "Put this one on the trash heap, too."

"Mom! We can't throw away books. We're not Nazis!"

"We won't throw them away, sweetie. This is Yale. We'll find them a good home. But if you know everything in all of them you don't need to keep them and if you don't keep this set, we'll have a good three months before Luke has to jack up this bed and build you another one so high that Logan has to climb up a ladder to get to you, like a princess in a tower."

"That does hold a certain appeal." Logan smiles at Rory. He's got his back propped against a wall while she sprawls on the floor, her feet in his lap.

I drop the Haiti book and grab one of the wine books, eager to change the subject to one that doesn't make me want to feed my knuckles to that cocky blonde kid. He's touching her feet. Not just touching them but _touching_ them, right out in the open like her mother and I can't see.

"Logan, one for you," I say. "You ready?"

"No use, I won't know the answer. Wine is wet and when I steal it from my parent's cellar, it's always delicious." He smiles. "That's all I need to know."

There's a low growling sound. I clamp my mouth shut, determined not to get myself in trouble with Rory, like I did about Dean. But then I realize the growl was Lorelai's stomach.

"So, apparently the pizza course is all used up," Rory announces. "Ice cream course? Might help you guys sober up."

I've only had two beers, but I'm manfully pretending to be too tipsy to drive so Lorelai can have a little more spying-on-Logan time. Which is working out surprisingly well considering she doesn't exactly need to pretend to be tipsy after drinking the other four beers in the six-pack.

"I'll get it." Logan moves Rory's feet out of his lap with a little caress to her ankle that I wish I hadn't seen.

"Are you sure?" Rory looks up. "You got the pizza."

"Least I could do, Ace, considering Luke was busy fixing the bed we broke."

Lorelai flinches, and covers it with a fake sneeze. I pat her shoulder. "Bless you." And bless that kid, because he's going to need it as his last rites if he ever again mentions sex with Rory while I'm within earshot.

"Besides, dining hall is just around the corner, if you're all okay with Yale-brand soft serve." He points at Rory. "Vanilla with Cocoa Pebbles on top?" Without waiting for an answer, he looks to Lorelai. "And the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, so…" He narrows his eyes. "Chocolate with Cocoa Pebbles and whipped cream?"

"Add yourself some candy sprinkles and you got yourself a mother in law," she proclaims.

He nods, though his eyes go a little distance and his smile turns plastic. "Duly noted. Luke?"

"Nothing for me, thanks."

"Logan…" Rory looks worried.

He whips a meal card out of his pocket and holds it up between two fingers. "Worry not. For the lady, I will even swipe."

Her face relaxes into a smile. "Three times. Since it's for three people."

He looks to me. "Ladies are expensive, aren't they?"

"The ones that are worth it, yeah." I nod, cocking a hand up under my head and thinking of the hundred grand Lorelai talked me into spending on my building, all the paint she put on my diner that hardly needed paint, and the thirty I've got tied up in her Inn. "Expensive as hell."

She tugs on my shirt tail, grinning. "Ooh, I'm worth it, am I? Because there's this little blue sweater Rory returned for me for the third time, and I actually think I might want to keep it. It would go super cute with my yellow rain boots you got me out of the boating catalog."

"Go," I advise Logan. "Or they'll keep adding stuff to the order until that little student ID of yours folds under the strain."

Rory still looks guilty, and he must notice, too, because he chucks her under the chin and grins. "Don't feel bad, Ace. This way you guys can talk about me while I'm gone. I'll make lots of noise before I come back in."

He saunters out.

I hate guys that saunter. I glance down at Lorelai, wondering what she's going to say. She says, rather shockingly, nothing.

I'm considering checking her pulse when Rory ventures, "Mom?"

Her fingers are twisting in the edge of her sweater vest, which I recognize rather well. It looks a lot more modest on Rory than it does on Lorelai, who always drops an extra button on the shirt beneath to make sweater vests look a lot more, "Bend me over the desk" schoolgirl than, "Studying on a Saturday" schoolgirl.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Yes, of course this is the nose I was born with," Lorelai says. "I do realize it's the perfect combination of cute and pert, but that's just the way the double helix twisted for me. And you should be happy that you got your Grandpa's nose because it will probably net you a neat seven figures of inheritance, which is even more useful than the perfect combination of cute and pert, if you ask my utility bills."

"Did you know Grandma's been coming to Luke's?"

Lorelai rolls up onto an elbow, throwing a quick glance at me before she focuses all her concern back on Rory. "Yeah, kid. I know. Why? Is she trying to strong-arm you into going back to Friday dinners?"

My eyes narrow. "I would not let Rory be strong-armed in my diner."

"Yeah, well, the Tsar of Russia didn't want to go to war either, but even when you've got a whole country of soldiers with pointy pointy swords and Napoleon comes calling, it's not likely everybody's going to sit down to hot cocoa and canasta," Lorelai says.

"That was a startlingly accurate historical analogy," Rory notes.

"Yeah, well, you talk to yourself when you're doing flashcards and I've got an ear for dialogue. Just ask me, I can do the whole second DVD of Titanic from memory."

"We know you can," I interrupt, because I really don't want to have to sit through that a second time. She gets this look of longing in her eyes when she calls out to Jack and for some reason that really turns my crank, and not in a good way.

Leonardo DiCaprio is a putz, anyway.

"She's not strong arming me, but she does seem…different," Rory admits. "We talked a little. I told her I wasn't coming back to Friday dinners until you did, and she said she's been trying to apologize but you won't take her calls."

I get up and start gathering my tools, loading them back into my toolbox. I'm not sure I'm supposed to be a party to this mother-daughter discussion, but I also feel like it's my fault because I let Emily into my diner, and despite all my rules, that does still mean she has a window back into Lorelai and Rory's lives.

"Aww, hon," Lorelai says, heart-deep sympathy in her tone. "I know she seems different. She can do that, for a little while. But it never lasts. And I totally understand if you want to go back. They're your grandparents and you have a right to whatever relationship with them you want. Just please, remember what I said about how they engineered that Yale matchmaking party when they found out you were with Dean. Remember how similar it was to what they pulled on me and Luke. As much as you want everyone to like you, you need to be assertive enough to set boundaries with them now while you still can. They will never respect your choices unless you're strong enough to stand up for your own decisions."

I steal a look at Lorelai as I organize my screwdrivers back into their case. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't thought about kids. Our kids. But I don't think even if I had another twenty years to try and catch up to her, that I could ever be the parent she is without even having to think about it. For as flighty and impulsive as she seems in her own life, she's got all the wisdom and foresight in the world when it comes to preparing Rory for her future.

"I was proud of you," I say abruptly. Because maybe if I'd said that out loud to Jess once or twice, he would have invited me to his Employee of the Month ceremony instead of me having to find out from his boss at Walmart. "When you told her you'd have pie with her but stuck to your guns about Friday dinner."

Rory blinks at me, surprised, then a tentative smile creeps onto her face. "Uh, thanks, Luke." She grins. "I liked when you growled at her, too." She drops her voice and her chin, imitating my grouchiest expression. "'Rory has homework.'"

Lorelai laughs. "You guys are starting to do your own bits. Do that one again this weekend for the video camera, would you?"

"Sure, sure, but if you think I'm going to mention you in my Oscar speech, you got another think coming."

"Right, because I only pushed you out of my own body and kept you alive in a potting shed for years. Clearly I need to put some effort into it to get into the Oscar speech."

Rory glances at the door, like she's not sure when Logan will get back. "Hey, I'm serious, though. I think Grandma's really different this time. And I think she's starting to like…Luke."

I scowl. "You didn't have to say it like that. I'm likable."

Lorelai explodes, and if she'd been drinking anything, it would have come spraying out her nose. She tips over, laughing until she shakes. "I'm likable."

Rory joins in, dropping her voice to the grouchy baritone again. "I'm likable, dammit."

"You guys are a real comedy team."

"I'll be here all week," Rory says brightly. "And this weekend, for the video camera, and the doughnuts you promised me."

"I didn't promise you nothing."

"I'm likable," Lorelai mutters, and erupts with laughter again.

"Cute," I say. "Real cute. Which you're gonna need, when you're hanging your thumb out on the side of the road to get a ride home."

"Luke, do you think Grandma's sorry?"

Lorelai stops laughing and I freeze with my toolbox in one hand. Lorelai sits up, looking at me like she's actually listening, and I could tell her what I actually think, but I don't want to be in any way responsible if Emily changes again and breaks her heart. When I picture that, I want to dump the old broad in the bed of my truck and drive her out to the middle of the Canadian tundra rather than let her anywhere near my girls.

But I also remember the way Emily's eyes droop and the way she slumps onto the counter stools after Lorelai leaves, every day, without talking to her. It's a little too much like the whooshy exhales Lorelai used to give when she made it to the sanctuary of the counter stools after escaping her mother.

And I wonder, with family, if there's any real escape.

There's a sore spot in my heart for Liz, and a matching one for Jess, and no amount of hugs and talks can erase all the times they've let me down. And no amount of let downs can erase the fact that those places in my heart will always belong to them.

"Don't put him on the spot, hon," Lorelai finally murmurs. "We've all got to make our own decisions about my parents, okay? Because life is long, and they're family, and a big part of becoming an adult is making hard choices and living with the consequences."

I clear my throat. "I'll have her out of the diner on Monday. I won't be responsible for her pressuring you two, no matter what her intentions."

"No." Lorelai rises to her feet and touches my arm. "I was talking about you, too, Luke. You have a right to make your own decision about my mother. And regardless of whether we come to the same conclusion or not, I will always respect your choices, because I respect you." She squeezes my arm. "You always do what you think is right, even when you hate it." She looks at Rory, then tips her head toward me. "You could do a lot worse than being that kind of grownup, kid."

I cough, then clear my throat into my fist, then swap my toolbox into the other hand. "I'm going to run these tools out to the truck."

I barrel through the room, not looking up to see Rory's reaction as I let myself out, because one of the things my dad taught me about being a man is that you let no one see you cry.

* * *

 _Author's Note: Only one more chapter, folks! Thank you so so much for all the support and wonderful reviews, and please remember NO REVIVAL SPOILERS in reviews because I need to finish my first watch of all seasons before I can watch the revival._


	7. Chapter 7

_Author's Note: Oh my gosh, how is it the last chapter already?! *_ _Cries_ _* Thank you so much for all your support, guys. I really didn't expect such an outpouring of interest for a mostly Luke/Emily fic, but I couldn't get the idea out of my head and the scenes kept coming. Thanks so much for going on this journey with me._

* * *

 **Chapter 7**

Something touches my forehead and it's so clammy-hot I swat it away immediately, groaning. Did Emily push a refrigerator over onto me yesterday? I feel bruised all the way past my skin and into my muscles.

"Luuuuke…" Lorelai sings out.

"I'll make the coffee in a minute," I mumble into my pillow. It's clingy with sweat, and it hurts my head. Need a new pillow. Better pillow.

"You're not going anywhere today," she says. "I had a dream I was being sacrificed into a volcano and one of those pec-a-licious barbarian guys was swinging on vines to my rescue. Then I woke up and realized you were my volcano. You're somewhere between the temperature of Sookie's fancy stove and my mother's eyeballs that one time when I poured my take out coffee into one of her Cristal goblets." She pauses. "Not sure which of those temps you're closer to, though, because I can't find a thermometer anywhere in this apartment that hasn't already been up a turkey's butt."

"Don't need a thermometer. Never sick."

"I know, tough guy." She pats my bare ass, and I remember I was feeling well enough last night to bid her an especially vigorous good night. Maybe that's what's wrong. Maybe I just overdid it. God knows the things Lorelai tempts me to do half the time end with me gasping for air and feeling like I have the fever from hell and it's directly centered in my abs.

"So, I know you're not sick, but can I get you anything before you take a little nap for the rest of the day?"

I crack one eyelid, and there must really be something wrong because she's dressed already—in her clothes, not my blue plaid. I push upward, but my body weighs about two of me and one of Lorelai all put together. Probably her fault. She did that _thing_ last night where she kind of gasped and her breasts jiggled and that always sends me half-crazy. Primordial, as Lorelai calls it.

"Just one more minute," I mumble over my tundra-dry tongue.

"Uh-huh. Want a fresh pillow?"

She handily rolls me onto it before I've realized what she's doing, but I don't mind because this pillow is much better. Refreshingly cool, and sweetly Lorelai's-hair scented. I mumble my approval, but it comes out half like a moan.

"Thought you'd like that." Something rattles and I drag an eye open to see her holding a bag of frozen peas. "See? Vegetables are good for something. All these years you've been telling me, and it turns out you were right after all."

I grunt.

She laughs, low and pretty so it doesn't even hurt my throbbing ears. Fabric tugs and loosens as she gently detangles the sheets from around my ankles, smoothing them away so they can't hold any more terrible heat in.

"Want me to say it again? I think it's really making you feel better." She pats the back of my thigh. "You were right about frozen vegetables," she whispers, all low and sexy-throaty next to my ear.

I almost chuckle, but that feels awful. Her nails pull through my hair, and that doesn't feel awful.

The next thing I know, I'm swinging on vines through the jungle. Steam vents erupt all around me as I get closer and closer to the mouth of the volcano. I drip moisture: sweat and all the humidity. Probably because I'm dressed like always. Jeans and flannel are too goddamn hot for the jungle.

Lorelai looks good, though. She's got on some kind of leather bikini—impractical for swimming, but nice to look at—and she's tied to a great big popsicle stick on top of the volcano, her loosely curled hair blowing in a breeze that never seems to touch me. I take one hand off the vine and try to unbutton my shirt but the fabric slips against my fingers and I can't seem to find the buttons.

A light comes out of the sky like in one of Taylor's diaoramas and spotlights her. Her mouth doesn't move, but her voiceover says, "Shh, hon. Just rest. Everything's okay."

I frown, hanging from the vine as all my momentum is lost. Doesn't she need me to save her? She looks strangely relaxed, all leather bikini'ed and tied to the popsicle stick, but that's just Lorelai. She probably already talked her kidnappers into running out for Red Vines and Chinese take out.

"Shh," she murmurs, her voice all soft the way it used to get when Rory was young and she was trying to soothe her. It makes me sleepy. I slip down the vine to the ground and trudge the last little bit to the volcano. "You're cute when you're sleeping, you know that?" Lorelai's voiceover says, the spotlight coming on again.

I sit down at her feet, because I think she's okay tied to the stake for now. She seems okay. I'm really tired. There's a cool spot at the back of my neck, so maybe I tore off part of my shirt in the trees. But the fumes from the steaming volcano must be really unhealthy, because suddenly my stomach lurches and I get that, "Oh no, it's happening" feeling.

I vault out of bed so fast that one Lorelai's fingernails scratches my back. The bag of frozen peas flops off my neck and onto the sheets. I make it to the bathroom and flip the seat up, sweat dripping off my nose as saliva pools in my mouth.

"Luke?" Her voice sounds close. Then she sighs. "I'm sorry, hon. Is there anything I can do?"

"Call Cesar and tell him we've got to close today." I have no idea what time it is, or even what day. "Can you call Rory to call Emily and tell her not to come in, too?"

I'm teaching Emily sandwiches this week. I can't remember what day it is, but I can remember that for some reason, as I sweat and crouch over the toilet. She sent her cook home and did Philly Cheese Steaks for Richard a couple of days ago. When she's excited about something, you can almost tell she's related to Lorelai. Which I never knew before she started coming in to the diner, because I'd never seen her excited about anything.

"Already done. Well, the Cesar and Lane part. I didn't think to call Mom. Is she coming in, like, every day now?"

I can't answer, because liquid rushes up my throat and pours out my mouth. It feels like it goes on forever, my stomach wringing involuntarily. God, it's been years since I've been sick. I forgot how much I hated it.

"There's some water and a cold rag here when you're done." Lorelai lays them on the tiny ledge by the sink.

I spit into the toilet. "Will you get outta here?"

"What? Do you think I won't think you're sexy anymore if I see you vomit?" She snorts. "Rory vomited on me like a billion times, and worse, and I still love her."

I pant for air, my stomach twisting. "I'm not your kid. I'm your boyfriend. It's different."

She takes up a place leaning against the bathroom door. "Do I need to come in there and pinch your butt to make my point? Because I will." Her shoes click as she shifts her weight. "Remember that one time when I had the flu for a week and you brought me three different kinds of soup because you were convinced we'd starve to death if I couldn't leave the house, since Rory was too young to get take out on her own? And I answered the door in Babette's old sweatpants and a high side ponytail?" She shudders. "Side ponytail. What were the 90s thinking?"

My stomach tries to turn itself inside out and even though I know she's watching, I can't stop myself from retching.

"See, I knew you remembered." Unbelievably, she pats my clammy back before retreating. "I'll finish the anecdote when you're done barfing."

I lay my head against my forearm and wonder how it is humanly possible to love that infuriating woman this much.

#

This time when I wake up, it's from a dream of Rory bringing home her boyfriends to meet me and Lorelai. I recognize all the dopes, because they've all dated my sister Liz at some time through her long and storied past. I don't remember all their names, but I remember all the ways they left: with her microwave, with her car keys, after breaking her window…

I shudder as I wake, rubbing at my eyes because they feel raw. The light slants through the windows from the west and it makes me dizzy for a second, because I never see the light like this from bed. The apartment's quiet. Lorelai must have gotten tired of watching me dash from bed to bathroom and gone home. Good. It couldn't have been too fun for her, wiping me down with cold rags, telling me stories in her sweet, soft little murmur, none of which made any damn sense. My memory of the stories is all a mix of fairy tale creatures like trolls and celebrity names that are only vaguely familiar. With Lorelai, who knows where they all came from.

My stomach's all wrung out and acidy. Needs something bland to settle it. Toast.

I swing my legs out of bed and find a pair of pants to pull on, and a tee shirt, because even though I told Lorelai to close the diner, the windows will still be open. Out of long habit and health codes, I put on shoes. It's not as sweltering hot in here now, and the sweat on my skin has dried. I need a shower, but I settle for brushing my teeth.

Considering how hard walking was earlier, I'm not too excited about the stairs, but my knees manage them with hardly a wobble. And of course the wobble is the exact moment Lorelai appears at the bottom, eyes wide and brilliantly beautiful as she dashes up to slip an arm around my waist.

"I'm fine. I've been walking on my own for decades. Think I can manage a couple of stairs."

She throws me off balance, trying to steer me into a turn that I resist. Annoyingly, I have to grab the railing to steady my weak legs.

"Hold up. I just need to make a piece of toast. And don't even say you'll make it," I interrupt before she can get started because she's been trying to do stuff for me all day and I don't need anything. I sure didn't need her to stay home from work to be bored in my apartment with me. "That old toaster's tricky and if you don't do it just right, you'll short out the heating element again."

"Uhm, that's really not a good idea right now."

"What did you do? Did you throw out my toaster? Dammit, Lorelai, it's a perfectly fine toaster. If you adjust the wiring every other Tuesday it runs like a damn clock. There's no reason to buy a new toaster." I shake her off and make it to the bottom of the stairs before she catches up, grabbing my arm.

"Don't be mad, Luke."

I sigh. "I'm not mad. I can just get it out of the trash out back and wash it off, like last time."

"No, not about the toaster. I didn't even throw the toaster away. This time."

The light's wrong. Not dark enough. I take one more step and look out into the diner—which is packed with people, some of whom pause to glance over at me. What?

Emily bustles over, appearing too close to my face, the fluorescent lights glaring. "Luke! Should you be up? Did you eat the soup?"

I blink. "Soup?"

Emily frowns at Lorelai. "My cook sent along precise re-heating instructions. It shouldn't have been difficult, and I know very well that you can operate a microwave."

"He was sleeping, Mom," she protests. "I was going to ask him if he was hungry when he woke up, but I just came down to get coffee, and then you made me eat, and I was just going back up, so clearly I haven't had a chance to set the building on fire with my inferior microwaving skills yet."

"I—" Emily visibly checks herself. "I didn't mean to appear derogatory about your cooking skills, Lorelai. I was just worried and I believe it made me sharp for a moment." She turns to me. "I didn't make the soup myself, Luke, so there's no need to be concerned. I didn't think you'd appreciate me trying the recipes before we got around to soups next week."

"I wasn't worried about the soup." I gesture at the diner. "What the hell is this? I told you to close the diner. Cesar is only really solid on breakfast. He can pinch hit for lunch and dinner, but there's no reason for him to work doubles."

"He's not." Emily lifted her chin. "I am. Cesar went home after breakfast. Lane and I have been keeping up just fine. I'm serving everything but soups. I realize sandwiches are a bit of a stretch, as we haven't really gotten through all of them just yet, but there have been no complaints, except for that awful man who was so upset that I'd put pickles on his hamburger, which of course I would not have done if he'd been kind enough to explain to me that he had an objection to them." She shakes her head. "Honestly. The rudeness is astounding. I don't know how you put up with it."

The bell rings as Lane puts up a new order, and Emily smiles at me, her genuinely excited one that always throws me off my game a little.

"I have to get back to it. I'm glad you're feeling better, Luke. Let me know if you would like something to drink, or to eat. When Lorelai was small, and she was sick, she'd ask the cook to make her garlic knots with extra cheese and bacon bits."

I shudder. Lorelai laughs, breaking off when she realizes her mom is laughing, too.

"Yes, well," Emily says, with a quick little glance at her daughter. "Not everyone has Lorelai's strong consitution, of course. Oh! That reminds me, Kirk came by and tried to order two of everything, but don't worry, I cut him off before he made himself sick. And he asked for a discount since you weren't cooking, but I did not allow it. Now, if you'll excuse me, I don't want to get behind on the orders."

Lorelai waits until she walks away, then she turns to me, all apologetic big blue eyes. "Are you mad? I had Rory call her to stay home, like you said, and when she showed up, I tried to throw her out and she started babbling about spoilage and ordering schedules and profit margins. It was like she was speaking in tongues."

"What are you talking about? You deal with all of that stuff at the inn. We were talking last week about what it was doing to your profit margins to have Sookie toss out every piece of produce that wasn't spotlessly perfect."

"Yeah, it's not foreign language to _me_ , but this is Emily Gilmore we're talking about. Finishing school doesn't include crass discussions of business. It's all ribbon tying and the most ladylike way to put on a set of Spanx."

I decide I do not want to know what Spanx are. I head back behind the counter and Lorelai follows me.

"What are you doing?" She grabs my arm, tows me out the far side of the counter, around my dad's cash register, and pushes me onto her normal counter stool. I feel oddly short right here, but it gives me a clear view of the kitchen, which might be good in case of emergency. She snatches up an order pad and one of my pencils. "What do you want? Tea? Broccoli? I can put on that maid costume to bring it out, if it would perk you up a little."

I'm a little more interested in the maid costume than I should be, because that thing doesn't have a back, but then Babette pipes up from the next table. "You guys are role playing already?" She smiles at Lorelai. "Best way to keep the spice in a marriage, that's what I always say. Good for you, sugah, keeping your man hooked like that."

I turn on the stool to stare down Babette. "She doesn't need to 'hook' her man."

Babette giggles. "Sure, sure. But it doesn't hurt to keep the old Willy waxed, you know what I'm sayin'?"

I turn back to the counter and start massaging my temples. "Toast."

"Toast and two aspirin, coming right up. I'll make it myself."

I look up at that, worried, and she straightens her shoulders. "Don't worry, I am a toast master. Get it, they make the speeches? And I can make the speeches, so I'm a master, a _toast_ master!"

I nod, even though I have no idea what she's talking about.

"You want wheat or white? You probably want wheat, huh? Because when Rory and I order white, you make that face like you're trying not to make a face."

She dashes into the kitchen, and I watch while Emily gets out some bread and passes it to Lorelai, who puts it in the toaster before coming back out to me. I motion her a little closer and drop my voice. "How's she doing?"

Lorelai shakes her head. "She's burning everything and they're eating it up."

"Must run in the family."

She bats her eyelashes. "You mean the charm?"

"Something like that." People like Lorelai, and apparently Emily, never have to cook because there is always someone else to do it for them.

In the back room, the toast pops, and Lorelai runs to get it, smacking her mom's hands away when she tries to take it out and butter it first. I can't help the smile that creeps onto my face. I've always had to cook for myself. Except, apparently, for today.

Lorelai brings my toast back. "I put butter on it. You better have wanted butter because if you eat dry toast that's so disgustingly healthy I can't even watch you."

I take the toast, watching over her shoulder into the kitchen. "You're right, she's burning everything."

Lorelai leans her elbows on the counter, dropping her voice. "It was the weirdest thing, though. She made me a rare burger, barbecue sauce on the side, cheddar cheese and a side of sautéed carrots and it tasted…"

I grimace. "Do I want to know?"

"It tasted just like you made it for me."

I look up at that, but Lorelai's already headed around the counter so I can't gauge her expression.

She takes the stool next to mine. I take a bite of my toast and wait, because she's got that look.

She tucks her hands under her legs, twisting to bump her knee against mine. "Luke?"

"Yeah." It comes out gruffer than I meant it to, because I'm still not quite recovered from the burger thing. Or Lorelai and her bag of peas and her weirdly soothing, nonsensical stories and fresh pillows. Or Emily in my kitchen, cooking horribly so I don't lose revenue.

"I'm going to Friday dinner this week," she says quietly, not looking at me. "But you absolutely don't have to go."

I put my toast down. "Yup."

"You're going to go anyway, aren't you?"

"Yup."

"Good." She rebounds with a smile, though a little vulnerability still lurks around her eyes. "I can't wait for my dad to see that look you give her that shuts her up mid-sentence. He'll be practicing it in the mirror all week long."

"Now that, I'd like to see." I take a big bite of toast. Lorelai's stopped twisting her stool, her knee resting warmly against mine.

"Ready for the kicker?" she says.

"Hit me."

"Friday night dinners are at my house now."

I choke. "What are you gonna eat, Cheez Whiz?"

"Mom says she wants to teach me to cook." Lorelai shrugs a little too casually. "And since I'm well versed in the whole drink-martini-and-nod bit, I bet I can do it leaning against my kitchen counter as well as perched on her horribly uncomfortable couch. Plus, this way I don't have to drive home, so I can get smashed." She pokes me in the leg for emphasis and I nod along, even though I know the only time Lorelai gets actually drunk is when Founder's Day punch is involved.

"Talk about the blind leading the blind. If you were trying to quell my nausea, this wasn't the way to do it."

"She uh"—Lorelai glances at the kitchen—"actually said she failed me as a mother." She pauses. "With the cooking thing, I guess."

I fight the urge to rub the center of my chest, because it feels funny all of a sudden. Probably from whatever bug has had me laid out all day. I rip the remnants of my toast in half, but then just tap it against the plate instead of eating it. "If you learn to cook, what do you need me for?"

"Orgasms," she says instantly. "Movie tickets. Reaching that one place way far between my shoulder blades that itches sometimes."

"Be still my beating heart."

"Ooh, talking about it is setting it off." She swings around on her stool until her back's to me, and squirms all around until I give in and scratch her back.

When I finish, she slips off her stool and drops a soft little kiss on my stubbly cheek.

I give her a suspicious side-eye. "What was that for?"

"That was a thank you." Her voice is so quiet now not even Babette could listen in, and she looks oddly serious when she takes a breath to go on. "I never thought my mother could be part of my actual life. I sure never thought I'd want her to." She nods toward the kitchen. "Pulling this off must have taken the heart of an elephant and the patience of a saint."

"Eh. Wasn't that hard." Normally, I'd leave it there, but her bulletproof confidence has a real structural weakness where her mother is concerned, so I say the rest out loud. "It's kind of impossible for anyone not to love you."

I wait for the flip deflection, or for her to tease me for going all sappy the first time I get the flu. Instead she leans into my side, something changing inside her expression as, quietly, she watches her mother cook.

* * *

The End

* * *

 _Author's Note: That's it! But hey, if you guys are liking the way I write Luke and Lorelai, I have a couple of one-shots queued up. One expanded moment from their first date, so we can see how they got from the restaurant to naked in bed, and one of The Moment, when the moon is full and Luke gives her the engagement ring. If you have a preference of which I should post first, please leave it in the reviews. And make good use of that author follow button because I'll be posting those very soon._

 _Also, if there are any Walking Dead fans out there, I'm churning out romantic fanfiction for that fandom at the moment as well. Feel free to have a peek and see if it's to your taste._


End file.
